If anyone, in any society at any point in time, is acting against nature and against the natural order of their bioculture, there is almost always a clear mark against them in terms of genetic fitness. Humans have gotten to where they are in their respective ways through very harsh conditions which select for people who will perpetuate and improve on their current capabilities to survive in those same conditions. Reliable change on Earth comes slowly, and so it is in the best interest of any organism to continue adapting to its locality. If someone is advocating radical changes that will upset the delicate balance of those adaptations, you can consistently predict whether those changes will be positive or negative based on the mind they came from and the body which that mind has chosen to present. This is not as simple as saying “ugly man bad” and calling it a day, although that’s definitely a strong indicator; it’s a difficult and complex balance, but it’s also one that we are naturally equipped to execute - more than that, it’s the one we are best equipped to execute, as it’s the substrate of our whole survival function. We must be able to identify strong, trustworthy, and truthful people or we will not reproduce.
It is obvious that certain groups are selling snake oil, because they will have distrustful physiognomy. We can know when someone is a bit crazy and is telling us nonsense with just a look at their eyes. But what happens someone beautiful starts telling us things and those things also sound eminently reasonable? How do we begin to assess that? What’s more, what if they have an unmistakable genetic unfitness of the most plain kind - what if they themselves will not reproduce?
I will give you a challenge I never wanted to give: I challenge you to watch an episode of Queer Eye. It could be the Netflix one, or it could be the old one that apparently everyone has forgotten about, indeed there’s probably an interesting cultural narrative available in a retrospective viewing of that but that’s for another time. Obviously I don’t want you to watch it for its intended purpose, I’m not expecting you to become a normie and accept the programming in it. The point is to turn your own critical gaze onto a show which levels a critical gaze at contemporary society. The point of Queer Eye is (or was, back when it was conceived) to present the gaze of the impartial outsider onto our sexual fitness. Five gay men, who are attracted to but not sexually invested in straight men, and who also have all the aesthetic sense that men seem to have differently from women, are in an apt position to critique us. It gives a fine edge to the term “globohomo” because the Fab 5 will overhaul the life and attitude of anyone in society, regardless of identity - who they are, what they believe, where they live, etc.; these do not matter. The homosexuals are given the last word on what is good and fit for purpose for the global cross-section of humanity. Perhaps one day they will go to Sentinel Island or the Congo, or maybe they’ll just spruce up a particular tribe of chimps and we’ll see exactly what sort of fitness they can actually impart under harsh conditions. Even so, it is impossible to deny that they form a sort of priesthood. They are like shamans for the modern woke religion, which has yet to fully calcify into a functional hierarchy but is already well on its way. They are not its zealots who will go out into danger to spread the good word, but they are the medicine men and witch doctors that even the respectable members of the old order will consult from time to time.
I will make a comment that some may cringe at but must be said - any woman will tell you this, by the way - the gay men in the show are attractive, well groomed, well dressed, (mostly) balanced and highly capable. If it weren’t for their sexual orientation they would be competing at the upper echelons of reproductive selection. This is where our thoughts about genetic fitness run into a big problem. These men are attractive - they win us over with their physiognomy. These men are smart and win us over with their skill and perception. There is also an element of selflessness which we equate with courage or kindness, because they go out of their way to help those not at their level. Just what the hell are they doing by not reproducing?
The answer is that they seem to be a product of the group’s genetic expression, much like great men miraculously arise when they are needed, men of non-straight orientation emerge to provide some sort of selfless service to the group. They’re helping us to improve our chances of reproduction not just by improving our appearances but also our circumstances. These days there is a certain question hovering around many historical figures who never wed - this is that function at work, whether they were truly gay or not. I believe homosexuality exists in two forms: genuine internal wiring (rare), and all-out hedonism (common). The former is, in my estimation, something that has accompanied Western culture in some small form for a long time. Tchaikovsky and Alan Turing are good examples. Its purpose is basically the same as celibacy, and it provides the group with a person who will not be splitting their attention between surviving and raising the next generation, someone who can devote all their energy to a cause. This first form is probably naturally occurring and it’s possible that without our hugely oversexualised culture with the “coming out” emphasis, most such gay men would not identify as gay (there is some overlapping thought to be had here regarding priests). By contrast, the latter form is almost undoubtedly caused by childhood traumas and is not naturally occurring. It does not serve a group-positive purpose. Men in the former category often are not flamboyant and can be hard to pick out from a crowd. Men in the latter make an effort to stand out, often excusing this as a refusal to conform to the norms. You can see broken, scared boys beneath their glamorous exteriors. Women will lament over the “loss” of attractive, well-adjusted men to the first category, but when the mask slips from the second it is like a stab to the heart. A brother has been lost to the abuses of this world, and it has swallowed him up probably never to spit him back out.
Traditional morals are never perfectly crafted to protect us from the exceptions to the rule. That is the day-to-day of living which we deal with, and as much as we would like to defer our morality to a precedent from another time or place, this instinct comes sometimes from a place of cowardice than respect for tradition. Does a gay person who is genuinely otherwise-wired and not a hedonist cause any more damage to our society than someone who is celibate? Of course not. But tradition isn’t trying to protect us from that, it’s trying to protect us from exactly the situation we are in today where we even need to ask the question. It isn’t so much that we need defense from the homosexuality of Queer Eye, but from that of Mardi Gras.
Yes I return to you all after a brief hiatus with an article about gay. No I am not being held against my will.